Saturday, June 17, 2017

Back when I was a teenager, around 16 or so, my friends and I would go to the roller rink. We'd skate around and listen to Motown songs. The person who skated around with us, supervising, was a guy who called himself Skippy.

Skippy was, I guess, 25-30. He was older, to give him that aura of authority. But there was something a little off about him. He had Elvis hair. By that I mean he had an elaborately combed and lightly greased pompadour. You just knew that this was the hair he had wanted to have when he was in high school. Back then, he didn't get to.

At the time, I, like a lot of boys, wanted to look like the Beatles. I didn't get to.

But Skippy, at that moment, could finally look the way he thought was cool. It just wasn't all that cool any more.

Well, a couple of years ago I was walking through an airport and I noticed that I was the only guy in the terminal with long hair. I was washing my hands in an airport restroom and, looking in the mirror, realized, "Oh my God. I'm Skippy!"

So when I got home I trimmed back my hair to conform to current fashion, which for men is pretty short. And it also acknowledged the fact that my head now looked a whole lot like my father at my age, a look I can only describe as Medieval tonsure. A lot of the younger guys these days poof up their hair in the middle. I don't have much hair in the middle these days. I wish I did.

Now my hair is about the same length as my beard. It's kind of convenient. Buzz buzz with the electric shaver, on a single setting. I haven't gone to a barber in years.

These days, I like fedoras. They keep the sun off my balding pate. They keep the rain off my glasses. The less hair, the more hat. And besides, fedoras are classic cool.

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These days, I'm the director of the American Library Association' s Office for Intellectual Freedom. I'm also executive director and secretary of the Freedom to Read Foundation. See "About Me" for contact information.